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Writing about website development, content management systems, and running a business.
How to Fix an Empty H1 Tag on Your Shopify Homepage
Shopify's Dawn theme homepage may get an SEO warning for an empty h1 header element. This is a missed opportunity to help search engines understand what your page is about. Small edits to the theme code can fix this technical SEO issue.
Fix Shopify Collection Image Blank Alt Text for Better SEO
Shopify's default Dawn theme displays empty alt tags for collection images. This post explains how to fix blank alt tags for Shopify collection images to improve your Shopify store's accessibility and SEO.
Feastables Shopify Store Review
Feastables, from YouTube star MrBeast, is a food brand making and selling "MrBeast Bars" through a fun Shopify store. Customers buy bars to enjoy really good chocolate and get chances to win prizes.
Creepy Company Shopify Store Review
Creepy Company is a Chicago-based retailer of spooky apparel and gifts with a fun Shopify store. It's Halloween year-round at Creepy Co. who has an "interest in creepy things and commitment to unique and impeccably designed lowbrow art."
Laser Tweets Shopify Store Review
Laser Tweets is a simple, funny shop that sells "artisan wooden tweets, made with lasers and love." It's a perfect example of how easy it is to bring a unique product idea to life and sell it online using Shopify.
Best Practices for HTML Background Video Optimization
Background videos are a website staple and can make a positive impact on users, but are often not fully optimized. This post covers the main aspects of optimizing background videos.
Converting Foundation's Grid to Tailwind
Here's how we converted our own site from Foundation to Tailwind, along with a cheat sheet to help you do the same.
Introducing the Lab Reports Plugin for Craft CMS
The Lab Reports plugin for Craft CMS provides developers with the ability to configure and execute custom, routine reports/exports on behalf of their clients.
Using Vue.js with Server Rendered Form Input Values
Vue.js is great for interactive forms, and updating page contents based on user interaction with a form. But Vue.js isn't so great for forms with input values already rendered from the server. We'll look at how to get around that roadblock.
Improving Google Page Experience With Core Web Vitals
Overall website performance has always been important but after Google's Page Experience updates in 2021, it's more important than ever. Improving your site's Core Web Vitals can drastically improve the page experience for your site visitors.
Craft CMS and Laravel Mix
We updated our build process for Craft CMS websites from a difficult to maintain Gulp process to one that uses Laravel Mix, which is easier for us to maintain, and more easily allows us to do advanced optimization.
Organizing Assets in Craft CMS [New Video]
Effective file management and organization is an often-overlooked feature of a content management system. Doing it right helps with everything from boosting SEO to saving server space. Our video demonstrates how to organize assets in Craft CMS.
Converting Google Maps to Mapbox
If your website has a Google Map on it that hasn't been touched in years, there's a pretty good chance that it doesn't work anymore. If your Google Map no longer works because you don't have a valid billing account, or if you want a unique (less expensive) map solution, consider switching to Mapbox! In this post, we'll show you how we did it on our own site.
Google Analytics Alternatives For Better Privacy
User privacy is a growing concern on the web. Websites using Google Analytics to track user behavior contribute to the privacy problem, but there are many privacy-focused web analytics alternatives to use instead.
Creating a Flexbox Sticky Footer with Tailwind
With Tailwind CSS utility classes, making a flexbox sticky footer is easier than ever.
Saved Filters Functionality for CP Filters Out Now
The latest update to our CP Filters plugin is the ability to save sets of filters, and this update is out now!
The Ultimate Craft CMS vs. WordPress Guide
Craft CMS and WordPress are often brought up in comparisons for projects of certain size and scope. You might be considering one or the other for your next web project, either for your own company or for a client project. This is our comparison, based around points that impact our own client projects.
6 CSS Selectors That Will Save You Time and Markup
Here are six lesser-known CSS selectors we've used to help our clients in the past year. These aren't fancy, experimental features that only work on the latest browsers. Instead, they're practical tools you can start using today.
Introducing the CP Filters Plugin for Craft CMS
Craft CMS 3 has no native way to filter content by multiple criteria in the control panel, so we developed CP Filters to add advanced filtering for entries, assets, categories, users, and tags in the control panel.
Craft CMS 3 Feature Tour
Craft CMS is a user-friendly content management system that allows you to create completely custom websites, and Masuga Design uses it frequently for client projects. Here's a look behind-the-scenes at what the CMS has to offer the content editor.
Deploying a Craft CMS Site with Gulp and DeployHQ's Automated Build and SSH Commands
Our method for coding Craft CMS sites allows us to generate local build files with source maps for development, and minifies and revs assets (and runs composer!) when deploying to production using Gulp and DeployHQ's automated Build and SSH commands.
How to Make Craft CMS Plugin Licenses Using the Craftnet API
Need to give away a free license for a commercial plugin in the Craft CMS Plugin Store? There is no GUI at id.craftcms.com to do this, so use the Craftnet API to easily generate license keys without a purchase.
How We Switched from Google Maps to Mapbox
With Google Maps' recent price hike, you may be considering switching to Mapbox. This post is a brief overview of how we made the switch for a client site.
Switching to Mapbox: the Less Expensive Google Maps Alternative
With Google Maps' recent price hike, many sites may face a massive cost increase. Mapbox is a less expensive, full-featured alternative to Google Maps. It may make your site look even better, too.
Keep it Brief. Life is not Email.
Life is short. It's amazing you're even here. Why are you spending so much of your time writing email?
Ask Qualifying Questions Early to Avoid Red Flag Prospects
I find red flags with potential prospects early by asking basic qualifying questions about timelines and budgets. Reading between the lines helps everyone move on before too much time is spent on a project that isn't an ideal fit.
Masuga’s Expensive Mistake: Our HubSpot Inbound Marketing Experiment (Part 2)
In Part 2 of our HubSpot Inbound Marketing Experiment, I share our experience over our first few months with HubSpot and our inbound marketing efforts, and how we eventually called it quits.
Masuga’s Expensive Mistake: Our HubSpot Inbound Marketing Experiment (Part 1)
In Part 1 of our HubSpot Inbound Marketing Experiment, I explain our decision to go all-in on HubSpot and the idea of inbound marketing to help our early 2016 revenue woes.
A Perfect Lull: What We Learned From An Extended Lean Time
Operating a small business can be difficult and unpredictable, with peaks and valleys that result in lean times. Over the past several months, we experienced a "perfect lull" in client work. Recognizing that we had a problem, we took four measures to fix it so that an extended lull in new work wouldn't jeopardize the business ever again.
Masuga Design Celebrates 10 Year Anniversary
On April 1, 2016, Masuga Design celebrates 10 years of website and application development. We're ready to kick off the next 10 years by moving to a new space in May, and in continuing to provide value for our clients. Let's keep rolling!
Creating a Sticky Footer with Flexbox
Getting a footer to stick to the bottom of the page with CSS can be problematic. Flexbox is a modern solution for creating sticky footers with variable height.